Today we went to five shrines (not six like I said yesterday)! The Fushimi Inari Taisha, which has hundreds of wooden orange gates, Daigo-ji, Saiho-ji, Daisen-In at Daikoku-ji, and Shisendo. My favorites today were Inari Shrine, Saiho-ji and Shisendo.
The beginning of the orange gates at Inari.
The poles of the gates were inscribed with prayers on one side, and were blank on the other. So you'd walk through in one direction and be hit with pure orange, whereas when you turn around and walk the other way you'd see all the carved prayers, also on orange.
Sweet neckerchief, dawg. These jackal statues are all over Inari, protecting the site. They are fierce.
Lichens on a tree at Saiho-ji. In order to enter Saiho-ji, visitors are required to hand-copy the sutra and listen to/participate in the chanting of sutras. This ensures that if you really want to visit this shrine, you will go through the motions, which can take up to two hours.
The guidebook said over 120 varieties of moss grow around the pond. And historically there was no moss at Saiho-ji until the grounds flooded around the Meiji period.
This was my favorite moss, it looked like a vine of sweet little hearts wrapped around the trunk of this tree :).
My shots of Shisendo were un-amazing, but this one kind of shows what it's about. Layering's key in the atmosphere of Shisendo - note the azalea bushes (round bushes closest to you) in the foreground, the Japanese maple in the middle-ground, and the grey foliage of the end of the property in the background.
The blue rubber sandals we had to wear while strolling the grounds of Shisendo.
Yes, this is a handmade medium format camera, built by a badass visitor to Shisendo. No thanks to the language barrier, all I could figure out is that he put it together himself (the body is carved wood!), and that he had done this with a medium format and a 35mm, modified to take panoramic shots. I was beyond awed, what a perfect way to end the day.
The beginning of the orange gates at Inari.
The poles of the gates were inscribed with prayers on one side, and were blank on the other. So you'd walk through in one direction and be hit with pure orange, whereas when you turn around and walk the other way you'd see all the carved prayers, also on orange.
Sweet neckerchief, dawg. These jackal statues are all over Inari, protecting the site. They are fierce.
Lichens on a tree at Saiho-ji. In order to enter Saiho-ji, visitors are required to hand-copy the sutra and listen to/participate in the chanting of sutras. This ensures that if you really want to visit this shrine, you will go through the motions, which can take up to two hours.
The guidebook said over 120 varieties of moss grow around the pond. And historically there was no moss at Saiho-ji until the grounds flooded around the Meiji period.
This was my favorite moss, it looked like a vine of sweet little hearts wrapped around the trunk of this tree :).
My shots of Shisendo were un-amazing, but this one kind of shows what it's about. Layering's key in the atmosphere of Shisendo - note the azalea bushes (round bushes closest to you) in the foreground, the Japanese maple in the middle-ground, and the grey foliage of the end of the property in the background.
The blue rubber sandals we had to wear while strolling the grounds of Shisendo.
Yes, this is a handmade medium format camera, built by a badass visitor to Shisendo. No thanks to the language barrier, all I could figure out is that he put it together himself (the body is carved wood!), and that he had done this with a medium format and a 35mm, modified to take panoramic shots. I was beyond awed, what a perfect way to end the day.
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